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They have had this feature since 1989 on the 7 and 5 series... I never used it. It is not a heater but a fan. if you have recently used your car and you have the engine off, you could use the residual heat of the car to warm up if you are in the car waiting for somebody or something, it is not too effective 2 hours after engine shut down.
In my opinion the timer is a useless feature and very hard to program.

They have had this feature since 1989 on the 7 and 5 series... I never used it. It is not a heater but a fan. if you have recently used your car and you have the engine off, you could use the residual heat of the car to warm up if you are in the car waiting for somebody or something, it is not too effective 2 hours after engine shut down.
In my opinion the timer is a useless feature and very hard to program.

Yes, the problem is that it is only a "half-feature". We had this option in Germany on our E39 but it was a pricey upgrade that included a remote-control, so you could start the heater (yes, that option included a heater) via timer or remote. The "cooler" is not A/C (certainly not - because engine stays off), so it is not that much of a difference..